2008-05-12 22:23:11

I'm a flash game developer and I've been making my games accessible. I've been using Windows Eyes to test my games' ability to cue the screen reader. My question is how do you get into a Flash game using the keyboard. I try tabbing but it seems to skip over the flash movie or else it simply says there is a flash element. If I hit enter it doesn't bring focus to the game. So far the only way I can bring focus to the game is to click on the element with a mouse. Can anyone explain how you can get access to a Flash game using a screen reader?
Thanks a bunch!

2008-05-13 01:47:42

If it's anything like Jaws for Windows it will put the web page into memory in a linearised format, and you should be able to use the up and down arrows to move through the page. In case you've missed it and it is helpful there is a resource centre for accessibility on Adobe's site, and in the game list on the main audiogames.net page there is a game called "blind date" made by the Royal National Institute of the Blind here in Britain which was written in flash as an example of what can be done.

Hope this helps some, let us know how it goes.

cx2
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To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

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2008-05-13 16:56:05

Thank you for your suggestion. I have visited the Adobe Accessibility site before and read the whitepaper by Bob Regan; it has been invaluable.  The game you mention, Blind Date, seems to have solved the problem of focus, but as I looked through its code I could see nothing different from what I have been doing. I have found that my problem of changing the keyboard focus to a Flash movie is a Firefox specific problem. Everything seems to work fine in IE. Do you know of any Firefox bugs/issues with screen readers?

2008-05-13 21:57:19

After some research it does look like Firefox has a bug with accessibility for plugins like Flash Player. I hope the fix it in Firefox 3.

2008-05-14 01:51:50

Well also most screen readers, with the exception of the free NVDA, tend to focus their development work mostly on Internet Explorer. NVDA is the only one whyich specifically recommends Firefox, but I'm not sure if it actually does anything with Flash at all.

Until a few years ago for the blind it was IE or bust anyway, since it was the most logical for them to provide the screen reader support for and they didn't really get to supporting Firefox at all until more recently. I do hope too though that accessibility support for Firefox improves, since NVDA got a not insubstantial grant from Mozilla I'm hopeful it might.

cx2
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To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

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2008-05-16 20:34:26

Thanks your help! I checked out NVDA and it is able to read the alt text I put in my flash movie. Playing with it definitely cleared up a few questions I had. Once I figure out how to get all the accessibility options working smoothly I am going to write a class for it to make it easier for other developers to make their flash projects accessible. Thanks again for everybody's help!

2008-05-17 01:24:58

Thankyou for being open to making your games accessible, and for being willing to approach and engage with the online blind gaming community. We need a lot more developers of all types, games flash and otherwise as well as just plain software and web site developers, that are so open minded.

cx2
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To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

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2008-05-27 20:50:09

I've another question concerning accessibility and Flash games. If you have tabbed onto something and which to click it would you use the enter button or another button?
I ask because I have been mapping mouse clicks to the enter button but I believe that some screen readers may be interfering with Flash's ability to detect when the enter key is pressed.

Regardless I'd love to know what the standard is.

Thanks you all for your help, it has been invaluable!

Also good news I've made a class for Accessibility in Flash which I am going to make avaliable for free use by other developers to aid in making their games more accessible. I'll post a link to it here once I am finished testing it for bugs.

2008-05-28 00:09:55

It varies by screen reader. Possibilities include enter/return, space, or for Jaws (not sure about Window Eyes or Hal) the numpad / key. If there is a way to just detect when the button is activated that might be simplest perhaps?

cx2
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To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

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